Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Our topic for the science project is to make a lip balm which has a better capability of keeping the moisture of our lips.
But we are stuck because we don't know how to measure it
Is there any good way to see how the lip balm works ?

What a great project!
I do not think there is a way to test lip balm, maybe by having a person record the time their lips become dry. It is a difficult thing to test because it all depends on the person, so I would suggest measuring it based on something the individual subject records.

Let me know if that helps!

brandonchen32,

Thank you for your questions and welcome to science buddies. You have a very interesting topic. One of the causes of chapped lips is the loss of moisture from the skin to the atmosphere. This is usually because the bodies natural oils have been removed for some reason (licking of the lips, cold wind, etc...). Lip balms often simulate the bodies oils to create a barrier that prevent further loss of moisture. Since any measurement of the moisture content of someones real lips would be difficult and subjective, you may do well to "simulate" some lips. I would do this by finding a permeable material (like thick paper...perhaps a coffee filter) to act as your "skin". I'd then place it over and tightly seal a container of water with it so that any evaporation must occur through your "skin". You can then test the level of protection by measuring how much water is lost over a certain amount of time. I would have an uncovered container (control) and one covered with "skin" that has no treatment (control), and one each covered with skin coated in your various lip balm treatments. This is just an initial suggestion on how you might simulate and objectively test the evaporation protection of the various treatments. This wouldn't do anything to test those treatments that claim to actually heal cracked lips and restore the lips natural protection, so you'll have to check that against your experiment objectives.

Thank you guys very much , if I have any more question i would post it here~

Hi have to do this research paper in school. I showed this experiment to my teacher, he liked it but he changed some bits. Instead on finding the best product he want me to find "THE AMOUNT OF MOISTURE IN LIPBALMS" Im pretty stuck there figuring out how to. I do really need help. Please reply ASAP like really soon. We have to atleast have 30 trials and have to defend my paper on January. So please help.

Hello cowleconcepcion,

As I replied to your earlier post elsewhere, several methods are available for finding the moisture content of different materials. Two methods that might be suitable for your lip balms are weight loss on drying and use of a moisture meter.

The weight loss on drying method involves weighing your material, drying the material in an oven, and weight the material after drying it. The difference in weight after drying is assumed to be the amount of moisture in the material. Usually the difference in weight is divided by the initial weight to calculate the percentage of moisture present.

Using this method may require some experimentation to find a suitable drying time and temperature. You may find that your lip balms melt and liquify when you try to dry them so you'll want to make sure your samples are in some kind of open container. For this method you'll need an accurate balance for making the weight measurements. A good temperature to start with would be 100 degrees C. You do not want the temperature too high because the wax and petroleum jelly can ignite. You might try drying your samples for 15 minutes, weigh them then dry for another 15 minutes and weigh again. If the weight changes after the second 15 minute period, more drying time is needed.

Inexpensive moisture meters are available for testing the moisture content of wood and other solid materials. These usually have two probes that are inserted in the material. A display shows the moisture content of the material as a percentage. Although I have no experience with this type of moisture meter, this method seems appropriate for your lip balm materials and may be worth a try. Just as an example, here is a link to the kind of moisture meter I'm thinking about:

http://www.amazon.com/General-Tools-Ins ... 797&sr=1-2

With either of these methods, I think it would be good to make tests of lip balms with known amounts of water included in them. That way you'd have an idea of the effectiveness of your moisture measurement method. For example, you could take 95 grams of your lip balm and mix it with 5 g of water to have sample with 5% water content. If your moisture test result for this sample is close to 5%, you have reasonable confidence of the results for your unknown samples.

I hope this helps and please ask if you have more questions.

A. Norman

hey norman this is cowieconcepcion. The reply was very helpful and useful. Apparently my topic is about "A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE AMOUNT OF MOISTURE ABSORBED ON TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF INGREDIENTS IN LIPBALM" same ingredients im using. i need help on how will i do this and how will i measure it. do you know what "rate of moisture" is? Thank you. PLEASE ANSWER ASAP. THANK YOU NEED AN ANSWER ASAP

Hello cowieconcepcion,

Could you post some more details about your project? Your previous question was about the measuring the amount of moisture in lip balms. But your most recent question seems to be about a different aspect.

Are you interested in finding out how different lip balm ingredients might change the rate of moisture loss (from skin for example)? If so, you might review the third post in this topic. In this post, theborg suggests a procedure that could be used for finding out how well lip balms act as barriers to evaporation of water.

I hope this helps and please ask if you have more questions.

A. Norman